UN Seeks to Control Internet: 1984 is here.

The United Nations has had commissions and committees on freedom of information since the sixties when a new wave of third-world nations joined the UN.

In the doublespeak of the UN, freedom of information means freedom for the governments of their respective countries to control information crossing their borders. The seventies had the Group of 77 pushing for UN licensing of reporters, among many innovations seeking to restrict or control information.

Since then, the UN has regenerated various plans to control the flow of information, always masking their intentions with the word "freedom" in the terminology. Because, of course, the UN has roughly 200 members of which most are run by families [Saudi Arabic & the Gulf states], military [most Arab countries & Burma, the PRC & N.Korea], and political kleptocracies [Latin America] all of whom detest political opposition or ban it outright. The sixty or so "free" or "democratic" countries are of course the most prosperous, and the most politically liberal.

The UN is counting on defections from the free countries among political liberals to allow it to cajole or even coerce the USA to give up ownership [through ARPA, the original DOD "inventor" of the internet---apologies to Al Gore]. GWB is becoming wobbly like his poppy and could look for legacy points by selling out USA ownership and control.

John Hawkins has my response already at his site. The internet is in its own way the last best hope for mankind overcoming the bureaucratic kleptocracies & quasi-totalitarian Lilliputians that attempt to tie down the US Gulliver with a thousand tiny threads.

The UN has become largely a joke as far as international governance is concerned. Let's not turn a joke into a tragedy.